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PolicyCON

PolicyCON: PEOPLE | PARTICIPATION | UTILISATION => TRUE POLICY MAKING - Post by Kwame Asamoah Kwarteng

The belief in diversity of views from people with different interests, backgrounds and biases has never been this relevant in this century. The rise of civil wars, polarised politics, underutilisation of trade agreements, the global un-competitiveness of some Micro, Small and Medium-sized Enterprises (MSMEs), etc. are indicative of the lack of input from diverse stakeholders with different biases on policies under discussion. We have seen the rise of platforms like Substack that allow individuals and journalists with opinions or facts on certain issues to independently publish at a subscription cost. There has also been the rise in sharing and scaling up the utilisation of the professional expertise of professionals to multiple businesses at a subscription cost (e.g., BambooHR for HR services, BetterHelp for Counselling services etc.). This does not only give MSMEs the advantage of choice, efficiency, cost leadership and lower operational expenditure to access higher quality insights & support, but also allows individual professionals the alternative to become independent in monetising their talents anywhere in the world.

So let me introduce to you PolicyCON.

PolicyCON is a decision support digital platform that leverages the expertise of academic researchers, Industry/Sector professionals, campaigners, and the ordinary individual with specific interests, expertise and or biases on specific local, national, regional, and global policies to provide diverse independent policy advisory services at a subscription cost to our subscribers.

It is a fact that local, national, regional, and multilateral policies and agreements keep changing at a faster rate. Any of these policies and their respective changes have a profound impact (positive and negative) that affects businesses, individuals, countries etc. For example, BREXIT has led to changes in immigration policies, trade policies, etc. Keeping up with these changes and knowing their impact, risks and opportunities can be very expensive, stressful, difficult, and demanding on the scarce resources of MSMEs. 100% of the entrepreneurs we surveyed agreed on the impact public policies have on their business sustenance but highlighted how expensive it is to run a policy department or to engage the services of think tanks to keep their businesses afloat in the changing policy environments. To policy officers surveyed, hearing wider and regular feedback from diverse voices, especially those who don’t have the opportunity to voice out their views on TV or have access to influential politicians, is of huge priority to them. Individuals with expert interest and biases on specific policies are limited in letting their views known in a more structured way that could be beneficial to the policymaker or beneficiary stakeholder.


At PolicyCON, we believe that effective policy-based decisions hinge on the availability and consideration of diverse analysis, perspectives, and opinions from diverse stakeholders with diverse interests. We believe all views matter and every view has a crucial context.

Our aim at PolicyCON is to provide a platform that connects individuals (i.e. academic researchers, industry professionals, campaigners, individuals) and groups with diverse but passionate interests in policy decisions to the respective policymakers to help make policymaking inclusive of all voices; The platform also repositions these passionate individuals/groups as policy analysts to provide diverse periodic policy advice and updates to Micro Small Medium-sized Enterprises who otherwise find it costly and lack the human resource to run an effective policy department. We will leverage our AI technology to support our clients in using our big data to compare, contrast, analyse to make an informed decision.

PolicyCON’s vision is to disrupt the think tank and policy consultancy industry and democratise policymaking to include relevant diverse views need for strategy development, business development, advocacy, and risk management for the benefit of individuals, businesses, and governments. Our mission is to democratise policy making and make every voice heard and support every stakeholder group towards making an informed decision.

Masood Entrepreneurship Centre has been instrumental in our success so far. They organised a variety of capacity building programmes that helped me in shaping my value prepositions, finances and connected me to excellent mentoring organisations like TiE North. Special Thanks to TiE North for also providing me with a one-year free Membership and connecting me with a mentor, Vikas Shah MBE. Also, I am especially grateful for the MEC Kickstarter Award. The Kickstarter funding gave me both the psychological and financial boost to start developing the PolicyCON Platform. The Kickstarter award served as a validation of my idea and has ever since supported my ability to attract my talented team members.

Our digital platform is under construction, and we can’t wait to see PolicyCON revolutionise policymaking and create lots of jobs globally.

 

Find out more from us via www.policycon.com

 

For collaboration or further discussion, kindly email both email addresses below:

Kwame.kwarteng@policyCON.com

kwame.a.kwarteng@gmail.com